The Nuremberg Rally of Annoying Cuteness

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Yesterday, on TV, was one of the most disturbing, yet adorable things, I’ve ever seen on television. It involved 80 young women in miniskirts and lots of chubby nerds waving glow sticks in the rain.

Before I get to that, though, I need to reminisce. One of the things I remember from when we still lived in Colorado was a short lived 1980 TV show featuring the Japanese pop duo Pink Lady. Mostly I remember them being both really cute and really bad actresses and that they sang “Knock on Wood”. I’d forgotten that Jeff Altman had been on the show and that they’d spent time in bikinis–Pink Lady, not Jeff Altman–which is something I’d normally remember. They also had a single reach 37 on the Billboard Top 40. The show was terrible and lasted only five or six episodes.

I didn’t realize until I got to japan how popular Pink Lady had been. Although they were already in their decline when they came to the USA–they broke up in 1981–when I got to Japan in 1996, even young people could still perform Pink Lady dances. (Their synchronized dances are one part aerobics and one part martial arts kata.) Here’s UFO, one of their biggest hits. You don’t need to understand Japanese, just watch the kata, er, dance. (Here’s another one from their peak era, 1977.)

One of the things foreigners don’t get about Japan is how intense the Japanese are about celebrities (called talents even if they have none). This is especially true of any groups that survive more than two years. Any group that does that begins to dominate television, including music shows and game shows. One quirk of Japanese TV is that most game shows are populated with celebrities and not ordinary people. There are lots of complicated reasons for this but that’s another post.

Very few groups, though have risen to the level of AKB48. They started out as a few young ladies performing in a small theater in Akihabara, the tech/geek district of Tokyo. Through clever marketing that played up the Lolita angle (they had a video that basically promoted “paid dates” and one that featured a soft core lesbian orgy/slumber party. Not safe for work.) They quickly grew to around 80 members and, if their expansion continues on pace, they will eventually rule Japan and the rest of the world.

One of the ways they stay fresh is to constantly rotate their lead 16 (called the Senbatsu) with members from the lower ranked groups. (Their structure is way too complicated to explain. Just think of it in terms of first string, second string, minor leagues, injured reserve.) Another trick is to involve the fans and let them vote on the order the girls should be in.

This is where the disturbing thing on television comes in. Once a year AKB48 take over a stadium and hold the Senbatsu Sousenkyou general election, which amounts to a political rally where fans can rank the girls. The girls are then forced to sit on stage until the results are announced whilst a stadium full of 70,000 chubby 20-something nerds ogle them and vote on them. The entire spectacle looks disturbingly like the Nuremberg Rally. (Here’s last years Sousenkyou; here’s the Nuremberg Rally.)

As their names are announced, each girl moves from a waiting area to her proper place on stage. The higher ranked girls get a chance to make a short speech. (Note: although they are part of the same group, the girls all have different managing agencies and are desperate to get a high rank and more exposure.) The winner becomes the official leader of AKB48 and gets a lot more air time than the others. This year’s winner was the annoyingly cute Mayu Watanabe (nickname Mayuyu). She was even dressed up like a queen (scroll down a bit) and given the chance to make a speech.

She said basically “Thanks to all the other girls, who are all still my friends and I don’t think less of them. I promise to do a good job, even though it’s a difficult job. Thanks to all of, you, my fans, who made this day necessary. Now KILL ALL HUMANS! KILL ALL HUMANS! KILL THEM ALL!” Well, that last part might be a bit of an exaggeration, but I have no doubt that if Mayu Watanabe ordered the fans to seize the parliament and throw out Prime Minister Abe they would.

A Mayuyu administration might actually be worth considering. Maybe they really will rule the world.

Floors and Floors and Floors of Stuff and Creepy

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I’m in a vaguely nostalgic mood tonight. Which means this will, most likely, lack coherence.

Growing up in Colorado, three places made strong impressions on me. They were all grandiose in, well, grandiose ways. All of them were bigger than they needed to be and all were kind of creepy.

The first place I remember is Gart Brothers’ Sports Castle. It was several levels of sporting goods squeezed in what, from the outside, looked like four.  I vaguely remember it having low ceilings–and since I was in kindergarten and/or first grade they must have been especially low–with lots of stuff squeezed in. I don’t remember why we went there, but I remember the ski machine and the golf driving range. (My dad liked skiing and golf, so that might explain why we were there.) I also remember worrying about the tennis court on the roof and what would happen if a ball went over the fence. I believe it’s now a Sports Authority, but I haven’t been there since, probably, Ronald Reagan’s first term in office.

Our favorite hang out was Cinderella City shopping mall which, for a while, was apparently the largest covered shopping center West of the Mississippi. The creepy part of Cinderalla City was Cinder Alley, which was a dark mock up of an English village that mostly contained cobblestone walkways, head shops, “Afternoon Delight” t-shirts and lots of hippies (yeah, and my family at times). Cinderella city is the first place I remember trying an Orange Julius (and being underwhelmed). One time, one of my distant cousins ate the Pig’s Trough at Farrell’s Ice Cream Parlour and there was lots of noise and beaten drums and various horns. I also remember this cousin wiping the trough clean, being accused of cheating for doing so, and creating a diaper for his spoon (which says an awful lot about this cousin and an awful lot about me for remembering that). Cinderella City now exists only as pictures on the internet.

Finally there was Casa Bonita, which is basically a TexMex theme park with average food and great atmosphere. I remember having to wait in line outside and that sometimes the lines stretched around the block. Once inside there were cliff divers, Mariachi bands, haunted wishing wells (that pretty much took our money then said we were all doomed) and lots of dark caves and hidden passages. I barely remember the food, although I do remember the little flag you had to raise to get more food and more sopapillas.

I think Casa Bonita still exists. If it does, I hope it still has places that are kind of creepy and that you think you’ll get lost in. I also hope the food has improved.

Beer Flavored Alcohol Delivery Systems

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I’ve written before about my off again on again ambivalence to beer. I’ll drink it, but it’s not my first choice. Japan, though, makes great beer. The big four brewers, Kirin, Asahi, Suntory and Sapporo all make great mass market beer and the latter also owns Yebisu, a small brewery that makes the best mass market beer in Japan.

Partly as a result of this, the Japanese consume a lot of beer. It’s common for adult students to ask how much beer I drink every night and I’ve shocked them by saying that I usually don’t drink that much. Even my in-laws don’t always get that I don’t need alcohol with every meal. (Yes, even for breakfast. On New Year’s Day, it’s tradition to drink sake with breakfast.) Every now and then She Who Must Be Obeyed or I get a craving for beer and buy a couple cans. (Pizza and curry are usually involved.) We also occasionally get a craving for wine. Some of my former students would be shocked to know that there is currently no beer in our house (and as of an hour ago, there’s no bourbon either).

However, thanks to government intervention, drinking beer in Japan is rather complicated and one should be aware that all that’s golden is not beer. The first category to be aware of is happoshu (発泡酒) or low-malt beer. This was created based on a loophole that anything made of 67% malt or more was classified as beer and taxed accordingly. The market responded by making low-malt beer that, at first, was reasonably tasty. The government responded by taxing happoshu and the brewers responded by lowering the malt content to 25% and below. As result, Happoshu flavors run the gamut from “Yeah, this is Budweiser” to “Dude, who pissed in my mouth?”

To further defeat the tax man, Japanese brewers lost their minds and created Third Type Beer from soybeans, corn and peas. The result is beer-flavored beverages classified as liqueur rather than beer and which serve as little more than alcohol delivery systems. They maintain the alcohol content, though, and are cheap. They therefore serve well as the “beer” you serve after your guests are a bit drunk and their taste buds have gone numb. (Not that anyone would ever be so, well, actually, yeah, I would totally do that.)

For me, though, this is mostly moot. Because we rarely drink, when we do have beer in the house, we usually only drink it with supper. If I’m having an after dinner drink I prefer bourbon or scotch.

But I’m weird that way. My former students would definitely concur.

Copy This Scribble That Feel the Pain

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Because I have, perhaps, an unhealthy interest in pens, it was only natural that after I came to Japan I would start playing with brushes.

Through a Japanese colleague who piqued my interest, and because I thought it would help me learn Japanese, I began studying shodo, or Japanese calligraphy. This involved acquiring some equipment (which the teacher was more than happy to sell me).  I needed brushes, a couple felt pads, a weight, some bottled ink, some ink sticks, a grinding stone and a lot of Japanese paper.

Each lesson started with me pouring some liquid ink on a grind stone and then darkening it with an ink stick. When it was ready, my teacher (whose name I’ve completely blanked on as I sit down to write this) would hand me the day’s lesson. I would then force myself into something resembling seiza and begin my practice. (To understand what it’s like to use a brush, hold a long pencil with a proper grip, but up by the eraser. Then hold the pencil straight up and down and try to write your name.)

I started with a kids’ book but she quickly realized I was serious and I moved on to higher level characters. For example, I might have these four characters: 雪山千里. I would copy them, using proper stroke order and technique (the first character has 11 strokes and starts at the top.) My teacher would then take out a brush loaded with orange ink and mark my mistakes. If I was correct, she would circle it. Eventually I’d do a test version that would be sent off to some evaluation committee that would rank me in a way similar to karate ranks.

Early on, I asked my teacher what a certain group of characters meant. She basically asked why the hell I needed to know what they meant; I just needed to copy them. 雪山千里, for example means, Snow Mountain Long Distance and apparently comes from a poem, but I’ll never know. This left me in the odd position of focusing on language simply as movement and form but not as meaning. Wondrous philosophical, that. Useless in getting a date with a Japanese woman, though. (Check it out, sweetheart, I can totally scribble the hell out of this piece of paper.)

Eventually I moved on to the cursive, or KANA, version of the characters. There was a small version, but my favorite involved a meter long piece of paper and a lot more pain as I crawled around on the floor. The cursive characters look a lot like the start of a Jackson Pollock painting when he was only dribbling black paint and cigarette ash. I still like this version the best because it has more flow and style than the block letters. Unfortunately, for all their apparent haste and sloppiness, they are no less precise than the block letters and my teacher spent a lot of time marking them up with orange ink.

In this style, I eventually earned a ranking. I even adopted a pen (er, brush) name and got an official stamp. My “official” name was 旅人道延, or Tabibito Doen (the latter pronounced very close to Dwayne). It stands for, more or less, “The Traveler’s Road Stretches.” (Another post that.)

However, after several cancelled practices on both our parts, I started attending a second night of karate instead and stopped studying calligraphy. I still have better handwriting in Japanese than I do in English. It just has no meaning.

Beer Whiskey Rice and Thongs but No Candy Bars

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It is an odd quirk of Japan that you can buy almost anything from a vending machine except, well, for things we usually expect from vending machines.

One of the first things lonely and bored foreigners discover upon their arrival in Japan, especially if they live in rural areas, is the local beer vending machine. I’ve seen grown men reduced to tears upon seeing these.

Beer and beer variants with a sake Super Cup and a couple ChuHai.

A typical beer machine with beer and beer variants. Also present are a sake Super Cup and a couple ChuHais.

I was even more impressed when I found a machine that allowed me to buy a fifth of whiskey and a two liter bottle of sake. It’s also possible to buy chuhai, which is a kind of like vodka and soda mixed with fruit juice.

Mostly ChuHai with a lone sake at the bottom center and a couple whiskey high balls bottom right.

Mostly ChuHai with a lone sake at the bottom center and a couple whiskey highballs bottom right. The sign on the right warns minors not to buy these items. (As if THAT would ever happen…)

I’ve also seen vending machines that offered kerosene; five kilogram (11 pound) bags of rice; individual roses; flower arrangements; complete hot meals of hamburgers and French fries (coming soon to the $15 minimum wage city near you); ice cream; soup; and women’s underwear. (More on that later.) You can also get soft drinks, including canned coffee. During the winter, some drink slots serve hot coffee and hot canned soup.

In fact, the only thing you can’t find with any consistency is a candy bar. That has begun to change though as some train stations, to save money money on staff, have been switching from kiosks (kind of like a newsstand) to candy machines.

For a while one of the vending machines near my house offered a dodgy gambling game where for 1,000 yen ($10ish) you had a chance to win an iPod nano, an iPhone, or a random piece of cheap Chinese made crap. Now it sells, um, intimacy related products right next to the soft drinks.

Soft drinks on the right and, um, soft core on the left.

One of these things is not like the other. Soft drinks on the right and, um, soft core (?) on the left.

There are, of course, a few rules. The beer machines usually shut down at 11 p.m., purportedly to keep minors from buying alcohol after hours. (Because, see, none of them would think of buying it at, say, 10:30.) Several years ago, under pressure from the government, and to keep teens from buying alcohol, the All Japan Liquor Merchants Association called for a voluntary ban on alcohol machines resulting in 70% of the machines being shut down. (I’m sure this had nothing, NOTHING to do with pressure from convenience stores.)

The newest trend, is touch screen vending machines which are both cool and kind of creepy. Especially if they ever start using them to sell, um, intimacy related products.

 

Some Things are Exotic, Some Things are Just Wrong

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Strangely enough, curry has followed me a good portion of my adult life. I had roommates from India who pretty much gave me a crash course in Indian cooking and, according to my friends, pretty much made me smell as if I lived in a curry restaurant.

Then, soon after I arrived in Japan, I was invited to an Indian cooking lesson. The couple from India taught the gathered group how to make authentic curry by first cooking down onions and then adding lots of other tasty stuff (my apologies for the technical terms) and eventually producing curry. I asked the man, who had done the bulk of the cooking, where the best curry restaurant in Japan was. He said there wasn’t one. He was from northern India and most of the curry restaurants in Japan served Southern, coconut milk based curry.

The Japanese have their own version of curry which is basically a curry flavored demi-glace served on rice and which is traditionally considered an abomination by those who come from countries famous for traditional curry (England, Scotland, large parts of Europe, for example). Yet, a few years ago, a Japanese TV show sent expatriates from curry producing countries such as India, Pakistan, Thailand etcetera around Japan to find the most authentic curry. They returned with curry omurice, which is rice covered with an omelet covered in Japanese curry sauce. (Omurice is short for “omelet rice”). The Japanese panel was underwhelmed and pointed out that purpose of the exercise was to find the best example authentic curry in Japan and the entire expatriate panel basically said there wasn’t one but they liked the (to them) unusual flavors of the curry omurice.

This is an experience that I’ve mostly got used to in my travels. Somethings are just wrong (eggs, tuna, mayonnaise, and shrimp on pizza, for example) and somethings miss the point (the Japanese referring to “hamburger steak” as a “hamburger) and somethings are adventurous at first then normal (using leftover Japanese curry to make curry udon, for example).

The rest of the world gets revenge when the Japanese go abroad. What has been done to sushi so upset the Japanese Ministry of Agriculture that in 2006 they started sending undercover agents to Japanese restaurants around the world to test the authenticity of the cuisine and give a rating. (What a great scam; how can I get a government job that sends me around the world eating things? I fear the authenticity of Kansas City Strips in steak restaurants. Please send me around the world to test and rate them.)

The bad press from the sushi police and, I suspect, the tastiness of the international variations caused the Ministry to backtrack and say the focus was on safe preparation and, dammit, we should be able to build a school to teach locals how to do it right, whilst considering local tastes.

Once again, how do I get that job?

 

The Road To Hell Denied As Long As Possible

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As Pleasant gives way to Humid/Hell, our family starts an unusual game of money saving endurance tinged with denial. I also am forced to give my students fair warning.

Basically our plan is to put off using our air conditioners as long as possible. Energy, even after the earthquake and tsunami and subsequent irratio-political battles over nuclear power, is still reasonably cheap in Japan. However, as cheap as it is, we are even cheaper (in a different sense of the word).

As the first step we take toward humid/hell, we put off taking out our fans. Granted, this is partly because the storage closet in the “variety room” (“junk room” is too strong a phrase as not everything in the room is junk) is hidden behind the variety pile. Taking out the fans thus requires a bit of rearranging, lots of washing of heavy blankets and the washing of the cover of the electric carpet. All of this is then folded and stuffed away with the kerosene heater whilst the fans are carefully assembled and the empty boxes returned to the storage closet.

We then endure the increasing humidity with fans and open windows for as long as possible. Our goal is to get as close to July as possible without having to use our air conditioners. (Note: most of Japan uses Split AC systems rather than central air, which means we have different ones for the living room and the bedroom.)

Once we end our denial, getting the air conditioners ready involves spraying them with cleaner and then running them to make sure the drain hoses still drain. (One year the living room one didn’t; temporary hilarity ensued. And a lot of wiping.)

We then use the fans to try and move air around. The variety room, where I do most of my “work” has no AC and I commandeer a fan to keep it coolish.

Then winter rolls around and the process operates in reverse.

As for my students, the new school building where I work is impressive but is also bright because it has lots of windows (translation: it’s a big greenhouse). Students therefore battle each other over the proper temperature. My basic rule is they lose five points for every degree above 24 Celsius (about 75 Fahrenheit). The highest ever was when someone set the temperature for 30 Celsius (86 Fahrenheit). I pointed out that when the temperature reached 30 we usually turned the air conditioner on. I then deducted 30 points from the guilty students final score.

We just took out our fans. Our journey to hell is well under way.

 

 

A Commitment to Writing by Committee Commitments

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One of the things I remain ambivalent about from my college days is the seemingly dozens of writing workshops I took. I took them in short fiction, poetry, novels, and play writing. In some cases I took more than one in the same genre simply to try out a different teacher.

For the most part, if someone is interested in writing I would encourage them not to study it at university. Instead I would recommend they choose a different field and then, perhaps, take a couple writing workshops, but even that is dodgy advice. At best you get some discipline because you are forced into deadlines. However you have to be careful because writing workshops are addictive and the work you produce not always your best. You do get exposed to a lot of criticism and critics–and have to develop a thick skin–however, you also may find yourself giving up on humanity.

What limits their usefulness is that most writing workshops are populated by the same characters. There’s the Stephen King wannabe who writes blood-soaked screeds that make classic splatter films like Blood Feast seem G-Rated. He complains about any story that doesn’t include a dismemberment and/or “naked chicks disemboweling men and eating their hearts” and tends to pepper his writing with big words and random italicized asides:

Mary took off her clothes. Now you will make me bloody. Mary plunged her hand into his stomach and reached up inside his thorax to his heart. Now shall you satiate my ravenous hunger. She let his heart beat in her hand for a few seconds. Alas my ravenous hunger cannot be sated by such miniscule flesh. Babette ate with glee. She has small tastes, my sister.

He has a thin skin to criticism and always reminds you that he has an agent. His odds of becoming a millionaire are quite high, though, so you always pretend to like at least one of his stories.

The bombshells, scattered equally between blondes and brunettes, usually write fantasy stories or mystery stories or stories about how much it sucks to be the oldest/middlest/youngest sister. They like everything, except the Stephen King Wannabee stories, but always try to find something positive to say. “I’m really impressed by your depictions of Mary’s emotions in this scene. I REALLY felt her disappointment that she wouldn’t be satiated.” The one who writes mysteries and the one who writes about her sisters will be rich.

The guy bombshells usually write fantasy and or sci fi or “real literature” and say things like “I really appreciated Mary and Babette’s different reactions to eating the hearts. I like that Babette felt satiated but Mary didn’t. I really like that dichotomy.” The one’s who write sci fi or fantasy will become rich. The one who writes “real literature” will end up as a university writing teacher complaining about the success of people like the other two.

The Spooky Smarty Pants likes to make comparisons to foreign writers you’ve never heard of in languages you can’t understand. “The focus on hearts is especially invigorating. It puts me in mind of the great Dutch writer Jaap Van Aarses and his famous line Chocolade is het meest gelukkig in de winter. (Yes, the Spooky Smarty Pants really speaks in italics.) There’s always at least two people who nod and say “ain’t that the truth” to these comments. (And at least two other people who want to beat the living crap out of those two.)

Then you have the wannabe comedians who pepper their comments with throwaways “I really wanted to tell Mary to have a heart.” or “I like how Mary really gets to know her boyfriends from the inside out.” or “That must leave a bad taste in her mouth.”

You also have the judgemental assholes. They usually write “real literature” and doom themselves to a life of teaching and blogging. They usually say things like “why did you decide to focus on hearts?” The writer, if allowed to respond, says something like “it represents the way she is taking their power” to which the judgemental asshole says “Isn’t that a bit cliche though? I’d be more impressed if she ate the liver because it was high in iron.”

Guess which category I belonged to.

The worst part, unless you have a teacher who knows how to limit comments and direct the discussion, is that you end up with lots of collaborators who offer bits of advice on how you should change your story. What’s frustrating is that individually they aren’t wrong, but taken as a whole they help you ruin your story.

Your best bet, if you take these, is to make friends with  a couple of the most sane people–if any actually took the workshop–and give your stuff to them to check out. That will help you more than the committee.

Note: A special thanks to Adam Curry of the No Agenda Show for the Dutch translation.

Crushing Together for Drink and Food

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Another late one, which means another drunk blog. We’ve got to stop meeting like this.

Tonight, as a kind of welcome party for my new colleagues, a few of us headed over to Saitama-city (the capitol of Saitama Prefecture) for the Japan Craft Beer Festival. I had stumbled across this annual event a few years ago when I was on my way to a night class. I had to go to the immigration office nearby and then headed over to a Hawaiian hamburger place. Along the way I stumbled across several kiosks serving exotic beer. Although I’m not a huge beer fan, I do appreciate a good ale and a good stout. I therefore started singing something like “oh sweet mystery of life at last I’ve found thee” but then remembered I was on my way to work. I therefore did some quick math involving time and blood alcohol levels and molecular decay and then got confused by all the math and decided it was best not to drink anything.

This time, though, I arrived early and was immediately freaked out by the crowds. Thousands of people had assembled and most of them had brought tarps to set out on the sidewalk under the trees. Hundreds of them had brought their children and forced them to participate in a large drunken picnic. I bought a beer and some fried chicken from a brewer connected to one of my friends and muscled my way into a place to set my food and drink. One American Style India Pale Ale from Brimmer Brewing later I felt a lot better about the crowd. I went and had dinner and did some shopping and then came back and met my friends. The crowd didn’t get smaller–in defense of the crowd it was a great night to be outside drinking beer.

We then proceeded to drink our way across a good portion of Japan. Craft beers, or micro-breweries are a relatively new concept in Japan. Before 1994 in order to get a brewing license a brewer had to produce about 528,000 barrels of beer. After 1994 the amount changed to around 500 barrels and micro-breweries began appearing around the country.

One of the things I like about craft beers is you can drink several and never drink the same flavor. Even the same beer from the same brewer can vary from year to year. The major brewers in the USA are kind of like McDonalds: the menu is pretty much always the same always tastes the same and you pretty much know what you’re going to get. Craft beer is more risky, mostly because the brewers actually take risks.

The second beer was a House India Pale Ale from Shiga Kogen Brewery. It had a strong hoppy flavor that created an instant craving for salt. We then got a four pack from Hakone Brewery. We liked them all but the stout was too heavy for a summer night. We then experimented with WineRed from Virgo Beer. This was a fruity, wine flavored gruesome concoction that reminded me of a spritzer made with beer. It actually got better as it warmed.

Towards the end, a friend of a friend did a suicide by mixing all the unfinished beers on the railing (we never got a seat; we just seized a portion of the railing). The result was surprisingly tasty, which told me I’d had enough to drink and it was time to go home.

Despite the crowd and the copious amounts of alcohol I didn’t notice any problems. There was one security guard walking around with a glowing baton acting as if he was in charge of the crowd. We all laughed at him because just the drunk foreigners present–and there was one guy there in a pirate outfit–could have ripped him to pieces and then gone for more beer. We didn’t know whether to mock him or buy him a beer.

 

Leaving There and Coming Back There

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About this time 20 years ago, and I may have the timeline messed up, I’d returned to the USA from Albania after a rather unceremonious exit caused by lots of complications stemming from my own remarkable ability to stare at the right thing to do and then not do it because I’m too busy staring at it. I was surprised, though, by a lot of happy/bittersweet surprises.

The night before I left I was given a send off party that was attended by my friends and several people I didn’t realize thought of me as a friend (a very complicated post that; until then refer to my above comments about my ability to stare at the right thing to do and not do it). I don’t remember wanting a party, but everyone I cared about–well, at least the non-Albanians–attended and some of them, as a direct result of a substantial amount of alcohol, serenaded me with Beatles’ tunes rewritten with my name in them. (A film of that night would have served as a great warning about the dangers of alcohol consumption.)

I should also add that I do not recommend you get drunk the night before you travel. I, did, however, emerge in surprisingly good shape.

The first hitch was that my Albanian airlines flight from Tirana was delayed and, surprisingly, it was not fault of the Albanians. Instead bad weather postponed the flight in Macedonia (aka the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia aka FYROM). When I finally left, I didn’t think I’d be sad to see the cobblestone runway get smaller and disappear, but I cried knowing I’d most likely never see it or a lot of the people I knew there ever again.  After I settled down, I had a nice chat with the gentleman traveling in the next seat, and he made my day by questioning the sanity of the exact Peace Corps staff member I’d spent two years having issues with.

I arrived in Zurich feeling surprisingly content only to discover that the delay had caused me to miss my flight and that I’d be stuck in Zurich for the night. Now, as a place to get stuck, Zurich’s not that bad. I got a hotel near the station, paid for, I believe, by the Peace Corps, and tracked down Swiss chocolate and some Cuban cigars. Soon after that, I was back in the USA.

Now, the dirty little secret of coming home after a long time away is that it’s not really home–at least not the one you left. Subtle things have changed: trees have grown out; people have aged; cars have changed; stores have closed; your parents have rented out your room to strangers and you have to sleep in the garage (something like that).

I then had a few months to kill before I started my Ph.D. program at Ole Miss. I went out job hunting and my attitude was the same as Lester Burnham in American Beauty “I’m looking for the least possible amount of responsibility.” Two years of teaching under lots of petty bureaucratic nonsense rules and the constant sense that we volunteers were always on display, made slinging tacos at Taco Tico seem like a great idea. At least until I was made shift manager and that responsibility thing came in to play, along with a short-sleeve oxford style shirt and a clip on tie.

I managed to settle back in and then moved to Oxford, Mississippi where I spent another two years in reverse culture shock before deciding to head to Japan for a couple years. At least I thought it would only be a couple.